I can't wait to get my arms out this summer

Times

23-07-2025

Have you ever shapeshifted, wardrobe-wise? Transformed from one type of dresser into another? Perhaps without even realising it? It's suddenly become clear to me that I have and I honestly had no idea.
I have been packing for the kind of villa holiday I haven't gone on in years, a relaxed, doing-nothing affair. In doing so — creating neat(ish) piles of options on my spare bed — I have come face to face with the fact that something has changed in the way I dress come summer.
Suddenly it's all about my arms — arms that, thanks to the cumulative impact of years of pretty full-throttle yoga and very full-throttle handstand training, look different to how they used to. First I got biceps. Then I got triceps. Now, as of a few months ago, I have deltoids, by which I mean the sort that stick out in front like the fender flares on a car.
I didn't plan for this but I can't pretend I am not happy about it. So behold a line-up of frocks and tops that have straps rather than sleeves, including a silk slip Serena Bute dress from a couple of summers back, which was about the time when I (for which read: my arms) really went up a notch. (The latest gathered neck iteration, in bright blue, pink or red is £295, serenabutelondon.com.) And there's also a dress with just the one strap, Mondo Corsini's raspberry linen midi (£365, mondocorsini.com).
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I also love Jigsaw's chocolate cotton with distinctive flower appliqué (£165, jigsaw-online.com), while Mint Velvet's burgundy floral slip dress is another stunner (£130, mintvelvet.com), and Mango's black or camel with a white-edged zigzag hem is very stealth wealth (£59.99, mango.com). New Look's black gingham bodice number scores pretty points (£34.99, newlook.com), Sézane's button-through cream Fabiola siren points (£115, sezane.com). Although what I probably need to add to my arsenal now is one with no straps, such as Nobody's Child's brown Gayle (£79, nobodyschild.com).
This is quite the move-on for a woman who used to dress for summer as if she were in The Flame Trees of Thika, who didn't knowingly flash any flesh at all away from a pool or beach for, er, the first 45 years of her life. But I am not going to hide these deltoids under a bushel. There may still be a couple of Tilly Grant-appropriate numbers in pile No 3 on my bed but I am not sure any more whether that pile is going to make it into my suitcase. Did I mention my deltoids already?
So my sartorial shapeshifting has come about as a result of an actual shift in body shape. How very humdrum of me. Turns out if you work hard enough and long enough you can get yourself good arms whatever your age, as evidenced by my yoga friends in their fifties and sixties (I am 53), not to mention a particularly impressive seventysomething I met recently who had flown in from Vienna for a weekend of yoga to techno music, as you do. She was nonchalantly knocking out handstands despite having had a hip replacement.
Who needs a mere It bag when you can get yourself It arms? So much more impressive to, ahem, engender something yourself than merely to buy it, surely? That designer tote might be fake but good arms are, perforce, the real and usually hard-won deal. Even weight-loss jabs won't help you with this one. Indeed, maybe muscle definition will become yet more coveted now that skinniness is available on subscription.
Great arms have become, for a woman of a certain age, the ultimate status symbol. They powered the rise of the sleeveless office-targeted sheath dress in the Nineties and have now moved out of the boardroom into, well, everywhere. Among the celebrity upper arms recently out on manoeuvres have been those of Heidi Klum (52), Jennifer Aniston (56) and — naturellement — Gwyneth Paltrow (also 52).
Somehow, getting your arms out — if you have the right arms — rarely looks muttony in the way that getting your legs out can at a certain point. It looks cool, not try-hard. It semaphores youthfulness and also power, very much including the literal variety.
Is this another example of a subconscious desire on the part of the modern woman to ape the physicality of her male counterpart, the better to compete in what is still, for the moment, a man's world? Another sartorial phenomenon to put in the same category as trouser suits and shoulder pads? These arms — or, to be more precise, my arms — are the kind that only men used to have.
Is it also, to proffer some more analysis, one more example of our collective resistance to ageing? To this I would answer, yes, definitely, and also that — like so much else related to the topic of ageing — there is a healthy level of resistance and one that equates not just to denial but to delusion. I have yoga friends who are ageing brilliantly, arms and all, and others who are definitely overcooking things and looking a bit like Ryvita.
Back to my togs. Added into my suitcase are an array of vests, the newest and the quirkiest by some margin an iteration with eyes from the Uniqlo x Anya Hindmarch collaboration (£7.90, reduced from £14.90, uniqlo.com). Though such is the potency of designer arms that designer vests — very expensive designer vests — have become a phenomenon too, as per the Prada number I am wearing in this photo. (That will be £720, thank you very much.)
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What I won't be emulating is a second vest-related flex that definitely isn't in my, er, wheelhouse, which is to wear said vest without a bra. I am leaving that to the twentysomething daughter of a friend, with whose nipple profile I feel myself to have become far too well acquainted in the past couple of months.
Nope, no amount of handstands is going to help me with the — how best to put this? — suspension requirements of braless vest-wearing. So thank goodness, as always, for Selfridges's bra whisperer, Clare Basche, and her recommendation of Chantelle's strapless smooth Norah in golden beige for its comfort and minimal visibility under cotton jersey (£59, selfridges.com). For an option with a lower centre bridge that would work under a V-neck dress or top, she rates Simone Pérèle's Essentiel strapless (£75, selfridges.com).
I love a feminine top too, such as Boden's linen Sophie, in a range of brights and prints (£65, boden.com), Mabe's blue and white boho Viti (£87.50, reduced from £125, mabeapparel.com) and Mint Velvet's more minimalist ivory satin style (£99, mintvelvet.com).
A waistcoat — such as Nobody's Child's in black, or in black or brown gingham — is one final way to go (£79, nobodyschild.com).
That's quite enough of that. I may have earned the right to bare arms but not to bore on about them.
@annagmurphy